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Now we'll move to questions that we can ask about the author's sources. And I just have two to present to you. So the first one, how does the author use other people's ideas or findings? How does the author use other people's ideas or findings? Second question, how credible are the sources the author uses to support their own findings? How credible are the sources the author uses to support their own findings? Now let's think about the roots of these questions. As you analyze the content of a reading, examine the sources that the author relied on to produce that content that they've relied on when writing the piece that you're reading. What is documented? Well, you can flip back to the Work Cited list or bibliography at the end of the piece. And there may even be internal mentions that don't actually get a reference. But still, you can read as having played some kind of role in the development of thought driving the author's ideas as presented. So that's concerning the what is documented, but alongside the white, we should also think about the where, where does the author's information come from? Where does it originate? So is the paper based on library research, primary research or interviews or anecdotal stories, personal narratives? If much of the text material comes from previously published work? How credible are those sources the author use to support their claims? This means that you're going to have to do a little bit of fact checking, digging behind the scenes work to make sure that you can say what's reliable, really is reliable. From the white and the where we can also think about kinds or classifications of sources. This might have you investigate into whether the author is relying on scholarly sources of information, or even not so scholarly sources. But even if they're of the latter sort, that doesn't automatically mean that they should be considered insufficient, or lacking some kind of essential quality that should, as it were, be there. Keep in mind, though, that discovering the source or the origination of the material doesn't give us all we need to know. So from that, we should also consider if there's any apparent bias, and the author's use of the source material, is most of their material taken from journals that share similar editorial stances, or has the writer tried to draw information from sources representing a variety of political, theoretical or methodological perspectives. Answering questions such as these can really help you determine the credibility and utility of the author's ideas, arguments or findings
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